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Our Price: $1.50
Product Details
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| Shipping Weight: |
0.50 |
| Author(s): |
Dover |
| Vendor: |
DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC |
| Publisher: |
Dover Publications |
| Published: |
21 April, 2006 |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0486450570 |
| Store Code: |
20946 |
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Genre: Minutemen (Militia); Juvenile fiction; Children: Grades 2-3; Children's Books/Ages 4-8 Fiction; United States; Readers - Beginner; Lexington, Battle of, 1775; Action & Adventure - General; Historical - United States - Colonial; Juvenile Fiction / Readers / Beginner; Fiction;
Review: The Battle of Lexington from a boy's perspective: When young Sam grabs his gun to enter The Battle of Lexington alongside his father, young readers won't help but wonder: What's going to happen to him? This central, suspenseful question is just one of the mature thematic elements encountered in Sam the Minuteman, a lean, accurate, and surprisingly contemplative historical narrative of the American Revolution's opening days. Benchley slips in key events and characters (the anonymous first shot, British Redcoats, Captain Parker, guerilla warfare) that may encourage young history enthusiasts to uncover the other stories behind Sam. Most provocatively, Benchley takes Sam on a hell-bent ("I'll shoot [the British soldiers]--every one!") revenge quest against his protective mother's pleas. This sub-plot alone may spark deep dialogue usually encountered in higher-level books. Lobel, of Frog and Toad lore, illustrates with a smoky yet highly detailed pencil, and inks in a sparse amount of red and shades of ocher. His limited media and autumn palette connote the era's harsh agrarian lifestyle, and the stark "do-or-die" mentality of the colonists. Benchley douses his prose with rich poetic metaphors, describing the warring British troops as "a bright river of red," and deadly bullets that "buzzed about like bees." The ending is abrupt, but Benchley's intention is to extend the conversation beyond the book's pages; quite likely to George the Drummer Boy, the companion piece to this book written from a British boy's perspective during the revolution.
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